I'm using a 2013 rome artifact rocker 153 with 2013 union force bindings. I love the board and I love my whole setup in general.

When I go to my local mountain, i'm always hanging out in the park trying to master new things. One thing that I suck at is my balance

Whats a correct way lets say approaching a rail? Not the rails going downhill i'm not that advanced yet, but lets say one where the snow is flat and the rail is flat. I can hit a 50-50 easily, but that's like girly. I want a nice clean frontside boardslide.

So what's the best way to approach a rail and be stiff throughout the whole grind?

same goes for boxes. Sometimes I find myself eating it, because I wasn't balanced properly.

How well can you butter? Butter moves build tremendous balance, and are similar to what you need to do, master those as a training step to jib-sliding rails. You can also try landing on your tail at the top of the half pipe and holding it, or just tail sliding the top too,

Start your approach at a speed that's feels a little slower than you might think you need and work up if you need, but remember your moving at that speed into a fixed object, the speed should be slow enough where you can get more height than distance and good pop out of an Ollie, you want to land in a more vert drop at an angle you/the board "spread butter" at and that abouts about it, you gotta stick it and hold it, when you come down start extending out your legs to reach the tip of the board to your landing point and try to land into a butter position, it's hard to explain cuz it takes forceful action yet graceful motion if that makes sense. I'd start practicing on flat ground, maybe flat landing 180's and 3's into a butter, then start scrubbing jumps into butter, then naturally progress into boxes or rails. I broke my wrist in the park on a down kink in the brooks park at Stevens pass trying just what you are, be careful

i haven't done them on a snowboard yet, but i can front board on a skateboard all day. best thing you can do is try on a shorter rail (length) or at the end of a box/rail. get the feeling of sliding backwards without having to hold your balance for so long.. i find it easier to come out regular, and look at the end of the rail or ledge on a skateboard. it helps spot your landing and let you know when to turn out of the slide, but most importantly keeps the shoulders in line with the slide. your shoulders will lead your whole body, so keep em straight. envision your upper body doing that 50-50, but just poking your front leg over the rail, and pulling your back leg in to compensate for the turn of the board over the feature.

i imagine that since snowboards don't have trucks, that i will learn to do these by starting as a 50-50 and then shifty-ing into front board position. on a skateboard, there was no such luxury... but you also aren't attached to the board, so it's easier to bail. trade offs!

Speed is your friend you are going to go a lot faster then you think. I am not saying go mach 5 like speed racer but if you pace off someone who can jib you will see what I mean. All the awesome looking shots in the movies is just slowed way down so it looks cool as shit. Think of it this way have you ever been on a balance beam and cause you were so slow you kept over correcting. Same thing here it is easier to get away with more when you go fast and you also normally crash off the rail. Also make sure you are centered over your board when you do the 50-50 and just rotate into a board slide at first till you feel it. Just for the record 50-50’s are not girly when you do a tame dog off the end of the rail.

Whats a correct way lets say approaching a rail? Not the rails going downhill i'm not that advanced yet, but lets say one where the snow is flat and the rail is flat. I can hit a 50-50 easily, but that's like girly. I want a nice clean frontside boardslide.

So what's the best way to approach a rail and be stiff throughout the whole grind?

same goes for boxes. Sometimes I find myself eating it, because I wasn't balanced properly.

For frontside boardslides, your approach line depends on where you want to be landing on the rail (which part of the board do you want to be over the rail) and also what variation you're doing of a frontside boardslide.

Are you going front board to regular or front board to switch landing?

For front board to regular you're typically wanting to land with the rail under your front binding, so you'd be approaching a tiny bit to the left of the box (assuming you're regular footed) so that when you rotate 90 degrees you'd be landing with the rail/box under your front binding as oppose to the middle of your snowboard.

If you wanted to land with the rail in the middle of your snowboard during a boardslide on a ride on box, you'd just approach exactly the same as a 50/50, lined up with the end of the box and making sure your line is straight, directly in front of the box.

As far as balance goes, 99% of the time people fall on frontside boardslides because they aren't keeping their board flat against the box or not taking enough speed into the rail/box.

Honestly if you can get a video we can tell you what's going wrong, but otherwise all of us are just guessing.

For frontside boardslides, your approach line depends on where you want to be landing on the rail (which part of the board do you want to be over the rail) and also what variation you're doing....

If you wanted to land with the rail in the middle of your snowboard during a boardslide on a ride on box, you'd just approach exactly the same as a 50/50, lined up with the end of the box and making sure your line is straight, directly in front of the box.

As far as balance goes, 99% of the time people fall on frontside boardslides because they aren't keeping their board flat against the box or not taking enough speed into the rail/box.

Well said

I'd add that you can try just "kissing" the rail too, so in a park run find all the rails that you feel comfortable on and form a route/line from top to bottom to link all the rails in your "run"

And just kiss each rail, practice this "run" and eventually you will be back side BS into 270 landing regular...

Another thing that sometimes helped people was, to think of the grind/rail time as a planned out and controlled fall in a fluid motion, working with the flex of the board rather than a stable rigid position fighting all laws of nature, go with the flow right, but plan your "flow" to stay in control

Just depends on how you think, take golf for instance, some people need or have to think about the bare mechanics of the swing to hit the ball, while others only concentrate on feel, ideally, finding a blend between mechanics and feel is what you want to do

Good advice here. One thing I want to point out is that the higher you ollie, the harder you will hit the rail and that makes it way harder to keep yourself from falling. The optimal situation would be to get just enough height to get on top of the rail, and a shitload of speed as the dudes above have said. I find it easier to do on a box so I would start from boxes and then move onto rails. And best way to learn, as it's said in the posts before, is to go 50-50 and then turning it to Bs boardslide. After that you can try doing a 50-50 and then jumping a little into the Bs board. Oh yeah one more thing, trust the board. It's your friend, not your enemy.